The Pub is one of the few great cultural icons of Britain. We are currently in a phase where the future of the pub is in doubt. This blog shows how pubs have changed (or not) over the past 10+ years. I first started taking pictures of pubs in 1986 and have amassed quite a collection. Most of these pubs are within easy walking distance of the English Canals and most are based in the Midlands. Apart from a (very) few, I have drunk in every pub pictured (and sometimes been drunk in them!)

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Saturday, 6 February 2016

When I first took a picture of this pub back in 1998 it was called the Cauliflower Ear and I'd never seen nor heard of it before.

Then we stopped in Birmingham on the penultimate night of our trip
that was to have taken us to Chester, but ended up with us visiting
Leek. In my quest to venture into pubs that we'd not previously visited
on our canal trips, we took a stroll into Digbeth and the Eagle &
Tun was one of our stops. It was the evening of Thursday 19th September2002 and as I
recall, we had a great time in there and the place was packed. Notice
how it has changed from being an Ansell's pub to a Free House, but
inside it was beautifully tiled.

Next
time I visited was a few years later, but it was very quiet even though
it was a Saturday night. So now we move on to Monday 15th August 2011 and it is closed.
Apparently it shut its doors in 2008 and there's no real sign of it reopening.

If
you panned back from this picture you'd see that there is very little
left standing around here. About 100 yards behind me is the Woodman pub
which is still open. I think the best bet for the Eagle & Tun is the
new High Speed (HS2) Rail project which is planned to terminate at Curzon Street Station which is to the right of where I'm standing in this shot.

You can get a flavour for the interior of the Eagle & Tun here
in the video for UB40's "Red Red Wine" which was shot in the pub in the
early 1980's. Hopefully it won't be demolished, but I'm not holding my
breath.

That's what I wrote back in 2011, but late last year I got a comment on the blog that the Eagle & Tun was back in business. Well, it's taken me a few weeks to get around to it, but here's the picture from Friday 5th February 2016!

I didn't go inside, but with smokers outside the door, it seemed to be doing OK. Hopefully this will be a long term going concern and survive into the 'brave new' era of HS2.